The Essential 4GW reading list: John Nagl

This is an archive of work by Dr. John Nagl (Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, retired), the newest chapter in the FM series about Modern Warfare’s Top experts. Nagl is one of our top experts in insurgency warfare.

John Nagl is President of the Center for a New American Security, a Visiting Professor in the War Studies Department at Kings College of London, an Adjunct Professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Dr. Nagl was a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy Class of 1988 and served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army for 20 years, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His last military assignment was as commander of the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas, training Transition Teams that embed with Iraqi and Afghan units. He led a tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm and served as the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, taught national security studies at West Point, and served as a Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Nagl also earned a Master of the Military Arts and Sciences Degree from the Command and General Staff College, where he received the George C. Marshall Award. He was awarded the Combat Action Badge by General James Mattis, USMC.

Dr. Nagl is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and was on the writing team that produced the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

His writings have also been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Parameters, Military Review, Joint Force Quarterly, Armed Forces Journal, and Democracy, among others. He was also profiled in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine. Dr. Nagl has previously appeared on National Public Radio, 60 Minutes, Washington Journal, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has lectured domestically and internationally at military war colleges, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and Defense Policy Board, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, major universities, intelligence agencies, and business forums.

“Defending Against New Dangers: Arms Control of Weapons of Mass Destruction in a Globalized World” In James M. Smith, Ed., Searching for National Security in an NBC World. Colorado Springs, CO: Institute for National Security Studies, July 2000

“A Strategic View of Where the Army Is: Homeland Defense and Issues of Civil-Military Relations”, with Don M. Snider and Tony Pfaff, in Max G. Manwaring, Ed., To Insure Domestic Tranquility, Provide for the Common Defense. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, October 2000 — Here is the PDF, 32 meg)

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3 thoughts on “The Essential 4GW reading list: John Nagl”

Why don’t you write an opinion for once? Who cares what Nagl has to say? What do you have to say about Obama’s 17,000 man deployment?
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.Fabius Maximus replies: (1) This is a reference source, the raw material from which opinions are made. (2) Nagl is one of the key authors of the US military’s COIN tactics. (3) My opinion about Afghanistan is evident in the 15 posts about it to date, which you can find at Iraq & Sub-continent Wars – my articles.

Nagl writes refreshingly from first-hand experience, devoid of the usual cliches. However I was disappointed that he doesnt consider the wisdom of the wars in the first place. However unrealistic — physically, culturally, politically — it was to launch the Iraq invasion, Nagl now treats it as just another practical problem to be solved. If the strategy was wrong in the first place, how can better tactics make it right?

I am basing this on only one article (A Battalion of Good Ideas), and may be understating his full range and point of view.
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.Fabius Maximus replies: I suspect that as a soldier (he only recently retired), writing about the broader issues of the war was not appropriate. Esp as only a Lt. Col.